The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1887-12-28
Vermont Farming.

Extract from an address delivered by
Hon. William Chaplin of Middlesex at the
meeting of the Board of Agriculture in
Richford December 90 1881.
"Of the technicalites of farming ] have
purposely said but little. The modes of
cultivation, the crops, the stock tools, etc.
will vary largely, according to the kind of
land, its location and all surrounding cir
cumstances. But the one steady purpose of
improvement and progress should be common
to us all AS general rule example, eX-
pertinent and practice are safer guides to
the farmer than theory or speculative guess
work. And we do not lack for noble eX-
amples of good farming in this country.
The 'Pinehedge' farm at Sheldonville,
Mass. lately occupied by A. W. Cheever,
editor of the NeiC England Farmer, was a
rare example of intensive progressive and
successful dairy farming. When | visited
it, in 1881, Mr.. Cheever was keeping twenty
four cows, three horses and pair of bulls on
twenty-seven acres of land, raising all the
fodder and much of the grain fed to them,
and that, too, on what must have been
naturally rocky, poor land-poorer than the
average Vermont land, but which by pa
tience, perseverance and skill had been
made into fertile fields, rich in plant-food,
producing two or three crops year, and
fair as the Garden of the Lord Such an
example is worth more than lots of cheap
tdH DR.. Hoskins' twelve-acre farm at New
port is, in its way, a great success as a sample
of profitable, pleasant and progressive farm
ing,
" But wish to cite one or two instances of
good farming nearer home. Up on the hills,
one and one-half miles west of the state
house at Montpelier, there was an old pas
ture of some thirty to forty acres. 1t was
much like other old hill pastures-covered
with stones, stumps, some lodges and bear
ing fair crop of the usual pasture grasses,
some brakes and weeds. About ten years ago
the owner, Colonel Elisha Payne Jewett,
began to improve this land by digging out
the stones and stumps, blowing, cultivating,
manuring literally and reseeding. lie has
| now got over about one-half of it, and so
well and thoroughly has he done it that the
past season he cut from thirty to forty tons
of choice hay at two cuttings, several hum
bred bushels of oats and had quite a field of
potatoes-all on less than twenty acres.
Adjoining this is the farm of Hon Homer
Wallace Heaton. This few years ago was
one of those rundown, neglected, deserted
farms, with tumble-down buildings, looking
like the abomnation of desolaton and
standing where it ought not Now all is
changed-good, tidy buildings, well-drained
and cultivated fields and everything APP
parently pleasant and prosperous. Possibly
Squire Heaton does not farm it quite as
well as Colonel Jewett but then he is not
as old, being only seventy-SiX, while Jewett
is in his eighty-seventh year am heartily
/ glad these boys of the old school have been
able to set so bright an example TO the boys
of this generation II you call this fancy
farming, | can only say | wish there was
/ more of it,. If more of our retired merchants,
/ lawyers bankers and capitalists would
! spend some of their surplus in this way,
/ giving employment and pay TO poorer men
who need it, it would greatly hasten that
happy time
"'When none shall be for the party
But all shall he for the Statei
When the rich man shall help the poor man
And the poor shall love the great
"Of the social or political standing of the
Vermont farmer himself have but little to
say. We are apt to complain that we,
| as class, do not get a fair share OF the
honors, emoluments and offices in the state
and nation or in social life. There may be
some ground for the complaint, and TO an
outsider it may look as though ours was
government of lawyers and capitalists. But
Ito vary Shakespeare "A little) the fault,
dear, dear farmers, is not in our stars, but
in ourselves, il we are UHdeH{ngS.' We are,
and shall be, just what we make ourselves
| or consent to let others make us. We have
the power as plurality, if not majority,
TO have our full rights if we only have intel
lgence. virtue and courage enough. And
for all laws that Cypress us or discriminate
against MS we have a peaceable remedy.
| And we look for the right to prevail-not by
riot and rebellion not by bombs or bullets,
but by that better weapon, the ballot
"' weapon that comes down still
As snow flakes fall upon the sod,
And executes the freeHdH'S will
As lightning does the will of God"